Posts

The
volume in question is compiled of papers that C. S. Lewis wrote, but never
published during his lifetime. The compilation was done by Walter Hooper. They
include texts written in the domain of textual criticism, and discuss, among
others, works by Spenser, Dante, Tasso, and Malory. In
the first article, ‘De Audiendis Poetis’,
Lewis argues that in order to truly understand the writers of a by-gone age, we
must adopt their beliefs and understanding of the world. That is, we actually
have to take, as true their view of the world and their beliefs about the
world---we have to experience their world from their perspective. This is to be
distinguished from “Perspectivism”, which claims that there are many different
perspectives on the world, and that none of these perspectives can be shown to
be demonstrably false or true. Rather, Lewis is arguing that in order to
understand a perspective we must analyse it from within, not from without. We see
a similar claim proposed in Mere
Christiani…

Introduction One of the big questions that Christian theologians of
all generations have had to deal with is the question of spiritual, exegetical,
and theological authority. I have already written about these subjects in other
blogposts (see here, here, and here), but, have recently been thinking about the notion of authority in
and of itself. Authority can appear to be a very nebulous term, for there are
many different types of “authority”, and, one might say (in jest), they don’t
all possess the same authority. If Socrates were asking the question, “what is authority?”,
and he received the response, “there is church authority, and government
authority, and parental authority, and academic authority, etc.”, he would
certainly respond something like, “I am not wondering about the different types
of authority, but wish to know what is common to all the types of authority.”
In order to know what is common to each, we might begin by examining, and
drawing out the c…

Introduction In this blog post I have done my best to keep my own opinions to a minimum, but,
rather, to present the opinions of theologians who are said to be (by Reformed people the
world around) some of the greatest theologians and authorities for Reformed
Theology. There is much talk of theological orthodoxy, but those who talk about
it the most are often the same who take the least amount of time to define it.
The general notion of orthodoxy could be summarized as follows: A thinker is
orthodox when they adhere to an official list of authoritative doctrines, and
unorthodox when they deny do not adhere to that official list. We might also
talk about “partial orthodoxy”, which is what happens when someone could be
said to adhere to most, or the majority, of the doctrines in the list, and
denies a minority of the doctrines in that authoritative list. Thus we can say
that a person is, for the most part, orthodox, but unorthodox in relation to
some one (or a few) doctrine (…